Continuation Theory
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: It isn't easy coming to terms with things when someone changes, and even harder when you can't remember why. But the real trouble comes when the person who's supposed to know what's going on is walking around with his eyes wide shut. RosexTen.
1. Chapter 1

Continuation Theory

Part One: Inertia

After they left her mum's house, she spent the next few days wandering the TARDIS, room to room to room; she wouldn't admit to him, not even to herself, who she was looking for.

He didn't press the point. It was something she would work out on her own, he supposed to himself, and there wasn't much he could do about anything, except grin and pretend nothing was different, except look the other way every now and then so she had a chance to examine him closely, except stand ineffectually outside her bedroom door and listen to her cry inside.

It galled him not to really do anything decisive; but how do you convince someone that you're the same? He concentrated on the solution, but knew that even any answers he might come to, any brainstorms that might make sense to him, were still, ultimately, subjective. They would be filtered through her eyes, sounded down by that complex mix of objections and leniencies that was Rose, and by the time they completed their circuitous route, they might not do him any good at all. So he focused instead on being himself, still balancing a fine line between nothingness and his emerging personality , still finding things out about himself that he was glad, or angry, or relieved, or upset, or thrilled to know. New traits got thrown at him out of the blue every day; he dodged them like a blindfolded man dodges a bullet, hopeless and ultimately resigned.

Things got normal.

* * *

"Will it open?"

He grunted. "Of course it'll open. What d'you think I'm trying for? Wouldn't try to open something if I knew it wasn't going to open in the end, don't you think? It'd be too frustrating."

She watched his hands. She liked his hands.

"You know, just once I'd like to see you blow someone's head off with that sonic screwdriver."

"Its been mentioned, Rose Tyler, that you are a very violent young woman."

"Does it have one?"

"One what?"

"A setting to blow someone's head off?"

"Amongst other things," he said, clamping his tongue between his teeth and half grinning as he heard the lock give way, "yes. Yes it does."

He wouldn't prove it, though, not even to show off to her.

* * *

"Are we going to live?" she asked him, and he knew she was feeling flippant, because when things got really dire she was interminably upbeat, not asking serious questions like the one she just had.

"For a bit longer, yeah," he told her, and saved the world again.

By a series of complex mathematical sums that in some languages of the universe would undoubtedly spell out a very rude word, they arrived back at the TARDIS in something of a state of undress. Rose took in herself, took in him, and declared her intentions of never travelling by transmat again if they were going to go all buggery on her just because they'd jimmied it with a pair of chopsticks and a balloon.

"I teleported home one night, with Ron and Syd and Meg," the Doctor recited with a wicked grin. "Ron stole Meggie's heart away, and I got Sydney's leg."

"And don't go all Douglas Adams at me. I like to keep my clothes on. Helps with my mental state."

He thought briefly of making some whimsical comment to the effect that, mentally, she was always undressed, but thought it wouldn't help much. The atmosphere in the control room was already rather thick, both of them breathing heavily from the journey, their clothes in tatters and revealing rather more than, by rights, they should have. Her shirt was nearly torn in two, right across the midriff, only a few obstinate threads holding on. Her jeans were in an equally disreputable state, and on the whole, he thought, sadly, she had come out somewhat better than he: trousers ripped strategically to show black boxers, coat rent in two down the back, jacket mere charred remains, half the buttons off his shirt, exposing pale skin. He'd also, at some point he couldn't quite identify, lost his shoes. He caught her looking. She caught him looking. They glanced away quickly and immediately looked back in the hopes that the other's attention had been distracted.

The Doctor clapped his hands together and rubbed briskly. "Right," he said. "No more transmats that have been jimmied. Or jury-rigged. Or tinkered with. Or messed about. Or cocked up in general. From now on, we walk."

She was laughing when he shooed her off to her room to change, and he stood alone in the control room for a moment, smoothing the buttons and wheels and switches and levers. He was glad to know that some things hadn't changed.

* * *

She walked in on him and stopped and stared and laughed.

"Your hair—"

He got up off his knees with a grunt, giving the console one last thump with his fist.

"You've ruffled it all—"

"Don't knock self-ruffling," he shot back, "its ruffling someone you love."

She blinked and shook her head. "Got everything fixed?"

"There wasn't anything wrong with it really— there never is— really— perfection, my ship. But, yeah. Fixed. Right, Rose, now that we've added silver bullets to our arsenal— and I don't think we're likely to find any more werewolves, I really don't, not after that one gets the word out—"

"Speaking of arsenals," she interrupted.

"Stop staring at my bum, Rose," he said without turning around.

"Speaking of arsenals," she carried on, blushing madly, "where's the library in this place? You've got to have one on here, right, big multipurpose ship like this. The TARDIS puts books in my room sometimes but they're all—"

"Pink-covered bodice rippers?"

"Well—"

"Very educational." He turned and gave her a grin at last.

"I'm looking for something else."

"Like what?"

"Regeneration for Dummies?" she suggested, rolling her eyes.

He opened his mouth to say something, and closed it again. Narrowing his eyes at her, he scrutinized her for a few seconds, brows drawn low over the bridge of his nose. It was the look he gave things when he had his spectacles on, she recognized it as such. The glasses were nowhere in evidence now, but she could feel him trying to make sure he was viewing her correctly.

"Ah," he said, "right—" and patted the TARDIS one more time before he moved towards the door, sweeping Rose along his path with him. It took him a few tries before he managed, mumbling about his beautiful ship's eccentric tendencies and how they were only to be expected in a work of genius, to find the right room. Instead of marching in and waving his arms and demanding her admiration, as she expected him to do, he stepped back and motioned her in with an obscure smile. She watched him closely, and went to the door. As she stepped past him she caught a faint smell of well-worn leather.

And he caught a flash of golden light.


	2. Chapter 2

**Part Two: This Is Saying Maybe**

"Find what you were looking for?"

She glanced up from her book. "Sort of."

When she didn't elaborate, he moved towards her, stealthily, and it was only the fact that her senses were highly attuned to him that she knew he wasn't standing still. She didn't look at him, though, just focused harder on the book to compensate for the awareness that was radiating off her body like an electric light. Like a—

He blinked, hard, and shook off the impression; because that's all it was, he told himself. An impression. An illusion of a shape larger than she, poised just over her like a shadow, an aura.

"I'm trying to understand," she said finally, and with absolute honesty, "why you didn't leave me behind when you regenerated. I mean, you've told me about your other companions. You do go through them, don't you? How many was it?"

His lips moved silently as he tried to count them all, and she shot a glance up at him immediately.

"Why didn't you leave me behind, Doctor?"

The truthful answer to that was far more complicated than he could even begin to explain, and so he said, "You weren't done traveling. You had more to see."

She bowed her head.

"Yeah. I had more to see."

The sight of her, prone and pathetic and probably on the verge of tears, the book slipping from her fingers, heedless of anything around her except her own sorrow, made him leap over the brink of what he should and shouldn't say. Reaching her in three long strides, he plucked the book from her fingers and pulled her out of the chair to stand in front of him.

"I would have let them stay with me if I could have, Rose. There's reasons for everything, you know. There was a reason for each and every one of them."

"Not that you didn't— that you stopped— feeling the way you had at first?" she said in a half-hearted accusation, and he sighed.

"Its not like that. Its not like that for you or anyone. Do you see, Rose, I don't— I don't change. Well, I mean, I _change_, but I don't _really_ change, the way I think and the way I am and the way I—" He realized he was rambling, shook it off and took another tack. "Let me put it this way. When you first met Mickey, how did you feel about him? Be honest."  
"Honestly?" She raised her eyebrows. "First time I met him, I thought he was a prat. It was a bad introduction, he tripped and his hand ended up down my shirt. Didn't really believe him when he swore up and down that it was an accident. Hormonal teenaged boy." She smiled slightly and he rolled his eyes.

"After that, then. When you first started dating."

She thought for a moment, then shrugged lightly. "Thought he was sweet. Liked him— liked him a lot, really. Had the odd fantasy or two about being with him for the rest of my life—"

"Exactly. And now?"

She opened her mouth, and shut it again. "Now, he's— he's just— Mickey."

"No more fantasies?"

She looked directly at him for the first time since this conversation began. "No," she said, softly but definitely. He nodded.

"Its not like that for me. I don't change like that. Everyone I've ever traveled with and known and—" He closed his eyes and sighed, and told the truth. "Everyone I've ever loved, Rose, they're still in my head, they're still in my hearts. I don't change. And it's a terrible weight they bring me, a terrible feeling of emptiness, of loss. Because they're there, but they aren't. I can see their faces clear as day, but they can never speak to me again, never comfort me. They aren't real, and it's a terrible sadness. I'm bound to be unhappy with or without them, it seems, as I move on and they stay behind— it's a matter of learning when the good balances out the bad. When the joy is worth all the pain."

"And have you learned it, Doctor? Have you learned when that is?"

He opened his eyes and smiled at her. "I said I wouldn't leave you behind, didn't I?"

She grinned back at him, suddenly, animation returning to her. "Yes, you did. I suppose you actually meant it, then?"

"'Course I did."

"Of course. Everyone you've ever loved." That sentence was clearly going nowhere as she shut her lips tightly over it, tipped her head to one side and stared at the floor as though she could bore holes in it with her eyes. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It wasn't a hard admission to make, really; the reason he hadn't said it before was because he knew it would be hard for her to hear it, rather than hard for him to say it.

"Things are different for humans," he said abruptly. "Even more than what I just said, they're different. Love to you is something you work towards. Something, even though you're born with it, its there just beneath the surface all the time, running through your veins, you hold it back, you deny it, and when you give it its only grudgingly, or as a prize. You spend a year living with someone and smiling at them and finishing their sentences and giving them shoulder rubs and then he looks at you in a certain way and it's a big surprise to you; you gasp and blink and ooh and aah and say _By God, I think he loves me!_" He looked right at Rose, now, and with some embarrassment she forced her eyes up and away from the ground and met his glance. "But that's not the way it is. That's not how it should be. There's love in us all, if we'd just admit it, and we'd die for each other if we could."

"You sound like a hippy," she murmured, though she was smiling now, and her eyes slid away from his and focused on his shoulder.

"I love you, Rose Tyler," he said, that teasing grin appearing on his face as if by magic. "Because I was born to do so, and to deny such love would be as denying my own existence."

Clearly he was joking; she laughed along, they laughed together. It was natural, natural to be happy with her, natural to tell her that he loved her, and natural to kiss her, and so he did. She tasted surprised, and familiar, and he wondered if she remembered how it was, before; wondered if she minded the difference in lips, the difference in height, though this regeneration was slightly more accommodating and she appeared to have stretched upwards anyway, and gathered her arms about him, and pulled him down so he fit perfectly there, molded, chest to chest, lips to lips, heart to heart to heart. It felt like she was learning him by touch and he wasn't sure why. There could be any number of reasons, really: regeneration, or forgetfulness, or measuring the here and now with the half-addled-by-Cassandra version—

And for Rose, as in everything, it was different. She could remember slightly, as if through a haze, the time her first Doctor— _she missed him, she missed him, and he was right there_— had kissed her. Or rather, allowed her to kiss him. He'd been near to her, but below her on the stairs, and she hadn't had to stretch upward— had only to grasp the lapels of his leather jacket and bring his mouth to hers. He'd kept his hands at his sides throughout, though he wasn't exactly a passive observer— and she didn't have time to be triumphant, didn't have time to tell herself that she'd gotten through his defenses. At the end, as though he knew it was coming, he grew suddenly almost desperate, and she felt a shudder like a sob wrack his body under her hands. Briefly then she felt his fingers on the small of her back, holding her closer, and his lips grew warm; but quickly his hands had withdrawn to her waist, and he put her gently but firmly away from him.

He'd explained to her that he didn't want to be compared to anyone— not like that. She'd thought he must mean Mickey till now. He didn't want, it turned out, to be compared with himself.

But this was sweet, and warm, and so heart-stoppingly familiar that she began to cry. He pulled back briefly and looked at her with compassion in infinite brown eyes, smoothed away the tears with his thumbs, and kissed her on the nose, tickling her skin with his eyelashes to make her laugh.   
"Don't be sad," he said, his voice curiously deep and husky. "Don't ever be sad, Rose Tyler."

"Do you know what I'm thinking of?" she asked quietly, and ruined it with hiccups.

He smiled at her. "I have an idea."

She took his hand and pressed his fingers to her temple. He closed his eyes and saw.

A bright day in the past and yet the future, and his former self and the second sun and Rose then and a mirror that reflected infinity in a very satisfactory manner. They'd saved it and restored it and in the spirit of joy and endless generosity— 

_"What do you want right now, Rose, more than anything? And don't say chips," he added._

"I wasn't going to say chips!" she said indignantly.

He eyed her for a moment, then sighed. "Alright, say chips if you mean chips."

"I wasn't going to say chips!"

"But you really have to mean it, I mean really."

"I wasn't going to say chips!"

He opened his eyes. "Bit random, wasn't it?"

She shrugged. "Happens like that."

He'd known even then what she was thinking, because at the time he'd been so attuned to her that her thoughts seemed to shout themselves even at ten feet away, and she was very close to him at the time. And looking at him. And he'd thought to himself that she was as much in his head as he was in hers.

"Did you want me then?" she asked, looking almost sulky.

"So much," he answered with unpremeditated honesty that took them both by surprise.

"And you wouldn't—"

"I couldn't, Rose. I couldn't lean on you any more than I did without breaking you to pieces— and I needed you to be whole." His fingers at the back of her neck entangled in her ahir and he rubbed at the nape in slow circles, absently. "If anything happened to you—"

"You'd have died?" she suggested in an attempt at lightening things. The look on his face was frightening her.  
"No," he said, "I'd have lived. And that would have been worse."

She thought about this, and nodded. "And now that you've got me all leant on and everything?"

He traced her lips with the tip of his finger, slid it slightly into her mouth to open it and kissed her lopsidedly. "Well. Even Time Lords can't hold out forever."

And yes, there was that taste again, that inhuman heat, that flicker of gold that weighted heavily on his tongue and warmed him all the way down his throat, that strange and horrible joy that made him worry that everything was going to be alright after all. The trouble with everything being alright was that it made it all so very, very domestic, and that wasn't what he was looking for at all. He sighed and purely in the spirit of exploration slid his tongue into her mouth as well. It was getting a bit crowded in there.

She smiled at him, eyes closed. "And will there be more of this?"

"More of this or more _than_ this?"

"Both."

He slid his hands into her hair and avidly watched the pulse in her neck as it beat at double time, much, much more often than it should have done. "Yes," he murmured, "I imagine there will."

He wondered if he should explain how things went, but it seemed likely to him that she'd figure it out on her own. Whether she knew it or not, Rose Tyler was about to change.


End file.
